Photodocumentary
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Karin E. Becker
Photojournalism and the tabloid press
Despite the presence in daily and weekly press in the past century, photography is rarely admitted to settings in which journalism is discussed, investigated and taught.
Photographs are used as criteria for evaluating, and ultimately dismissing, tabloid newspapers as �merely’ popular.
History of photography and the tabloid press began with three distinct types of publications: first the elite periodical press with its established tradition of illustration; then in the tabloid press with more popular appeal; and almost simultaneously, in weekly supplements to the daily press.
The idea that a picture of an actual event could be treated as news by creditable institutions is contradictory because photography was constructed as a purely visual medium, therefore is bypasses the intellectual processes that journalism will address and cultivate. Photography is more immediate, direct appeal is seen as a threat to reason and to the journalistic institution’s Enlightenment heritage.
In early 1840’s illustrated magazines were launched almost at the same time in several European countries. These magazines were all using wood engravings to illustrate news.
Well-known artists were hired to “cover” events, and competed to be the first with their reports. For example, Leslie’s, on the north Americas first publications sent an illustrator to hanging of the anti slavery movement leader John Brown in 1859 where he was then sent back to New York to meet the press deadline. The text with the engraving stated it was from “a sketch by our own artist taken on the spot, invoking the authority of the eye-witness.
At the time wood engravings where preferred over photographs because the camera was considered to stiff and too dependant on luck of the machine. In contrast, the hand drawn image that reflected the artist’s perspective and the engravers craft.
Photographs where used frequently used as a reference for the engraver, lending the machines authority to the artists work.
The 1890’s saw these conventions of illustrations gradually being adapted to photography.
Technical innovations and new legal privileges were also encouraging growth, and most important, with industrialization and the shift to a market economy, advertising began to provide significant support for the weekly press.
Advertising volume grew from 360 million to 542 million dollars between 1890 and 1900,
The tabloid = sensationalism = photography
By late 1890’s, after the process of half tone photograph reproduction was invented, it was only used occasionally by some newspapers. The exception was were two US publications that were in competition, they used pictures as a key to successful and sensational coverage.
In the 1920’s, the large sensational photographs first appeared, with violence, sex, accidents, and society scandals as the major themes. This was a slow point for the press, an expression of what they consider the loose morals and loss of ethical standards that threatened public and private life.
The �sensational’ occurs within journalistic discourses that are also bounded by cultural, historical, and political practices that in turn position the ethical guidelines around different types of content, an important point to remember when examining the tabloid press of different countries.
In the US, the sensationalism of the tabloid press was intensified by �photographs of events and personalities reproduced which are trivial, superficial, salacious. It was not the subject matter, but the ways the photographs reproduced which appealed to the emotions and thereby created the sensation.
The rationale for prohibiting the photographing of news-worthy events that take place where reason and order are seen as crucial typically in judicial and legislative bodies. Newspapers often violate these prohibitions, which confirm the need for self-regulation.
One case in New York, of a husband who wanted to annul his marriage to his wife because he found out she was part African American, during the trail she was required to strip while the courtroom was cleared and no photographs where allowed. Yet, The Evening Graphic